Our local mezzo Sarah Connolly has just released a new CD on the Signum label entitled A Walk with Ivor Gurney, in collaboration with Tenebrae and the Aurora Orchestra - there's an interview with Sarah on the Presto Classical website:
"Gurney and his contemporaries are the focus of a new album that sees award-winning choir Tenebrae join forces with the Aurora Orchestra and mezzo Dame Sarah Connolly; I spoke to Dame Sarah about the fascinating mix of elegiac works on this album, and about Gurney's unique place within the history of English music in the twentieth century.The thread is Ivor Gurney, his music and influence on those around him during his lifetime and now. Ralph Vaughan Williams was his professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, but he also became a good friend. Throughout Gurney’s lengthy confinement in the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford, Vaughan Williams was one of a handful of people who consistently visited him. Several times Gurney escaped and ran to Vaughan Williams's house deeply distraught; with a heavy heart, Vaughan Williams returned him the next day. I often wonder what today’s treatment of Gurney’s bipolar disorder would be; his only wish was to be in the Cotswolds, walking day and night, and because this was disallowed, he decided never to go outside again. I find that desperately sad. The disc was made to capture some of the music performed at the Gloucester Cathedral Ivor Gurney window fundraising evening concert in August 2013 organised by myself."
"Gurney and his contemporaries are the focus of a new album that sees award-winning choir Tenebrae join forces with the Aurora Orchestra and mezzo Dame Sarah Connolly; I spoke to Dame Sarah about the fascinating mix of elegiac works on this album, and about Gurney's unique place within the history of English music in the twentieth century.The thread is Ivor Gurney, his music and influence on those around him during his lifetime and now. Ralph Vaughan Williams was his professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, but he also became a good friend. Throughout Gurney’s lengthy confinement in the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford, Vaughan Williams was one of a handful of people who consistently visited him. Several times Gurney escaped and ran to Vaughan Williams's house deeply distraught; with a heavy heart, Vaughan Williams returned him the next day. I often wonder what today’s treatment of Gurney’s bipolar disorder would be; his only wish was to be in the Cotswolds, walking day and night, and because this was disallowed, he decided never to go outside again. I find that desperately sad. The disc was made to capture some of the music performed at the Gloucester Cathedral Ivor Gurney window fundraising evening concert in August 2013 organised by myself."
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